


Consentacles

by sabby1



Series: Consentacles [1]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Humor, M/M, Magic, Prompt Fill, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 09:08:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20905157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabby1/pseuds/sabby1
Summary: Alec stared at the spectacle in front of him with an open mouth and wide eyes. He and Magnus had been married for over a year, and he had never, ever, seen his husband like this.“I can explain.”Magnus was holding his hands out in a placating gesture, silver rings sparkling on his fingers, as he looked at Alec with a desperate plea in his kohl-rimmed dark brown eyes.“Uh-huh,” said Alec.Magnus comes down with a case of accidental tentacles. Alec copes.





	Consentacles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lynne_monstr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynne_monstr/gifts).

> 10/04/2019: I am drunk, so I talked to my hubby about Tentacletober and consensual, sentient tentacles. He said Consentacles first, so clearly this is his fault.
> 
> ETA Morning After: Bluh… I finished this last night but was too tired to go over it one more time. Here it is in all its lack of glory. All 31. prompts for [Lynne-monstr's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynne_monstr) [Tentacletober](https://lynne-monstr.tumblr.com/post/187578809624/its-official-tentacletober-is-here-31-days) are included in some fashion.
> 
> List of prompts in the end notes.

Alec stared at the spectacle in front of him with an open mouth and wide eyes. He and Magnus had been married for over a year, and he had never, ever, seen his husband like this.

“I can explain.”

Magnus was holding his hands out in a placating gesture, silver rings sparkling on his fingers, as he looked at Alec with a desperate plea in his kohl-rimmed dark brown eyes.

“Uh-huh,” said Alec.

He was too busy staring at the iridescent black mass of tentacles writhing around his husband to form complete words.

“This isn’t what it looks like.”

Alec made a doubtful noise in his throat.

Magnus cringed. “Okay, it is what it looks like, but it’s not what you think.”

“Uh-huh.”

The tentacles weaved and curled through the air, their thick black tendrils wending their way toward Alec. One of them stopped less than an inch away from his nose. Alec felt the slick, wet pull of a suction cup as it booped him.

“How many of those are there?” he asked thinly, staring at the single appendage in his face.

It wiggled its pointed tip up and down as if it to say ‘hello’.

Magnus grabbed the unruly tentacle in his fist and pulled it back.

“I don’t know,” he said. “A dozen? They keep moving.”

“Uh-huh.” Alec said again.

“Can you, please, stop saying ‘uh-huh’?”

“Huh.”

Magnus rolled his eyes and huffed out a breath.

“Thank you so much,” he drawled before he turned serious. “Look, I know this comes as a surprise, but, trust me when I say, I had no choice.”

Alec massaged his temples and sighed. Of course, there would be a reasonable explanation for his husband suddenly sprouting a bunch of tentacles out of his back. Magnus was the High Warlock of Alicante. He had exceptionally strong magic and an infuriating habit of sacrificing himself to protect others. Alec had no doubt the tentacle story involved saving somebody else from certain death.

“Okay, tell me everything.” Alec pinched the bridge of his nose. “But can I get a drink first?”

“Of course!” Magnus responded immediately.

It had been a long day. There had been several meetings with members of the Clave. Clary’s returning memories were causing an uproar. Isabelle and Simon had gotten caught having a romantic relationship with a mundane – apparently it didn’t matter to the rest of the Council that the mundane had previously been a clan leading vampire.

The gentle pressure of warm digits massaging the knots out of his shoulders and back made Alec groan in appreciation. Until he realized there were rather more than ten and they were too far apart to be fingers.

His eyes snapped open to the sight of a tentacle holding up a martini glass with his favorite drink.

“What?” Alec said helplessly, accepting the glass.

“They won’t hurt you,” Magnus said quickly.

“Obviously.”

Alec took a sip from his drink and basked in the silky burn sliding down his throat. The tentacles kept working their magic. Alec was having a hard time reminding himself why this was a bad thing.

Meanwhile, Magnus threw a pained glare at the shiny black appendages kneading and slapping at Alec’s shoulders and back.

“Oh, for f—” he hissed, attempting to pry them off. “Leave him alone.”

“No. Don’t stop,” Alec said reflexively.

Magnus froze and stared at him wide-eyed.

Alec ducked his head. “Sorry. It just feels kinda nice.”

Several of the appendages flicked their tips in Magnus’s direction as if to flip him off before they returned to massaging Alec.

Magnus stared aghast as Alec leaned into their ministrations. Probably because Alec had accidentally made a noise that usually only slipped out of his mouth when they were having particularly amazing sex. Alec tried to collect himself and cleared his throat.

“So, what happened?”

Magnus raised his hands in the same placating gesture he had used when Alec had first come home.

“Don’t get upset,” he said. “Madzie lost control of her magic.”

Alec’s mouth snapped open but before he could start anything, most of the tentacles had wrapped themselves around him in an unsettling amalgamation of a hug and a straight jacket. One of them was patting Alec’s head as if to calm him down. Another took the martini glass out of Alec’s hand.

“She’s fine,” Magnus said insistently. “Everything is fine. Catarina took her home about an hour ago.”

Alec relaxed slightly and stared pointedly at the constricting tentacles around his arms and chest. They didn’t budge even when Magnus glared at them and tried to whistle them back.

Magnus sighed. “I’m sorry, but the long and short of it is, I’ll be stuck like this until I can figure out how to make them go away.”

He started to struggle with the long, sinuous appendages, pulling on them until the suction-cups released Alec’s skin with loud pops one at a time. They left behind vivid red marks.

Alec snickered.

Magnus looked at him with raised brows. “You think this is funny?”

Alec licked his lips and looked back at Magnus from between his lashes.

“Remember the last time I had to use Iratze because you gave me those hickeys?”

Magnus gasped. “This is so not the same.”

Alec was still snickering. “It kind of is.”

He had to laugh about it. What else was he going to do? His husband had come down with a case of accidental tentacles. They were going to – heh – stick around for the foreseeable future.

Alec huffed out a laugh. “You’ve got Accidentacles.”

“Not funny, Alexander!”

Magnus smacked his arm. Several tentacles lashed out and smacked Magnus right back.

Alec snorted. “Guess they’re Protectacles.”

Magnus glared at them. Then he glared at Alec.

He still couldn’t stop. “When we have sex tonight, does that make them Consentacles?”

Magnus made an outraged noise in his throat. “Who said we’re having sex tonight?”

“We’re not?” Alec faked disappointment.

Magnus glared so hard he almost went cross-eyed. “Alexander Gideon Lightwood. Are you saying you want to engage in tentacle porn?”

Alec pressed his lips together and tried not to laugh. “Maybe?”

He wasn’t sure they actually could. What if the tentacles got jealous? They seemed to be pretty independent of Magnus. It was a good thing they liked Alec as much as they did or there might have been a real problem.

For their part, the tentacles didn’t seem to mind the idea. One of the more brazen appendages slipped between Alec’s legs and snaked up behind him.

Alec’s mouth opened in a scandalized gawk and he snapped his hand around, trying to grasp the silky-smooth tip before it could sneak inside the waistband of his pants.

Magnus narrowed his eyes in a dangerous scowl and zapped the offender with a blast of magic. He promptly regretted his action and jumped with a yelp of pain.

“Ow! Damnit!”

The tentacle snapped back and curled up in mid-air. There was a bright red spot on the iridescent black skin.

“Genius,” Alec grumbled. “Now you’ve hurt yourself.”

“I was trying to teach it not to mess with you!” Magnus fumed.

Alec rolled his eyes in exasperation. “It _is _you, and you mess with me all the time.”

He cradled the injured tentacle in one hand and winced in sympathy at the angry red abrasion.

“Come on,” he said, leading his husband and assorted tentacles into the bathroom.

“That was really dumb,” he said as he dabbed the wound with alcohol, blew on it, and covered it with one of the glittery band-aids they kept around for Madzie.

Magnus pouted at him from his seat on top of the closed toilet lid.

“You know I could’ve just used my magic to heal it.”

Alec raised his brows. “We’ve talked about this.”

Magically healing all minor injuries wasn’t a good way to teach Madzie responsibility. How could she take safety seriously if no one ever had to suffer the consequences of their actions? 

“Uh-huh,” said Magnus, trailing his gaze all over Alec’s arms and neck. “I’m sure you’ll walk into your office on Monday morning looking just like you do now.”

Alec narrowed his eyes. “Hickeys don’t count.”

He told himself he was not a hypocrite.

“Sure,” Magnus drawled. “Right.”

“Shut up,” Alec grumbled and pressed a kiss to Magnus’s pout. “You love me.”

Magnus hummed as if he was contemplating the veracity of the statement.

A little over a year ago, Alec would have been insecure and doubting his feelings. A lot had changed since then. He nipped on Magnus’s bottom lip and curled his fingers into the soft hair at the nape of his neck.

“You know you do,” he murmured before he deepened the kiss.

Magnus made a noise that couldn’t be interpreted as anything other than agreement.

Alec felt his husband’s arms wrap around his shoulders. Then he felt several other appendages slide and curl around him from his chest all the way down to his ankles.

“Okay,” he said, laughing, “that feels really, really weird.”

They didn’t have sex that night. It was just too weird with all the tentacles sliding around the sheets.

Magnus had almost run off to sleep on the couch, but that was where Alec had drawn the line. He was not sleeping without his husband because they had a dozen wiggling extra appendages to contend with.

“If we can deal with Madzie kicking around in circles, we can deal with them.”

Magnus relented and they finally got some sleep around three in the morning when the tentacles settled down cuddled up between them. 

Alec woke up the next morning, knackered and grumpy, to the smell of coffee and bacon.

He shambled into the kitchen with his eyes half-closed, following the delicious smell. His eyes nearly popped out of his head when he saw what was happening.

The tentacles were making breakfast while Magnus was standing around with his back to the stove, slurping a cup of coffee.

One of them was wielding a large kitchen knife, cutting up a tomato suction cupped to a second tentacle on the counter next to the stove. A third tentacle was holding the handle of the frying pan on the front burner, while Number 4 was flipping the bacon with a set of tongs. Number 5 tried to squeeze juice from an orange into a glass Number 6 was holding up.

“Are you insane?” Alec shouted. “You don’t even have opposable thumbs!”

Magnus hummed in his throat and glanced over his shoulder.

“Apparently,” he said, “they don’t need them. They make great coffee, too.”

As if to prove Magnus’s point, one of the tentacles offered Alec his favorite mug. He lifted it numbly from the sucking grasp and stared dumbly while the prehensile appendage added just the right amount of milk and stirred it around with a teaspoon.

Alec sighed, blew the steam off the top, and took a sip. The coffee _was_ great.

They sat down at the kitchen table and let themselves be served breakfast by their domestic tentacles.

“We both agree this is surreal, right?” Alec said over his second slice of buttered toast.

“Absolutely.”

Magnus held his coffee mug out for a refill without looking up from the large leather bound volume he was perusing for a way to remove the Accidentacles.

While one of the tentacles topped off Magnus’s coffee, a second one sneaked an extra slice of bacon onto Alec’s plate. Alec bit his lip.

“It’s kinda nice, though.”

Magnus raised his brow. “Don’t think I didn’t notice that. I do feel them, you know.”

Alec patted his partner in crime. It was the one with the band-aid. “It’s okay. He won’t hurt you again.”

The tentacle curled around his wrist in a quick hug before it retreated back to the stove.

They still hadn’t found a solution for the tentacles by the time Monday rolled around.

Alec had never been a fan of Mondays, but this was one of the worst. It came with an unexpected fire message from Izzy, saying someone was trying to burn down the New York Institute and kill every Shadowhunter inside.

By the time Alec and Magnus joined the fray, it was an all-out bloody battle on the glamoured grounds around the cathedral. Deadly magic in every color of the rainbow was zooming in all directions. The newly minted Downworld Deputies were fighting tooth and nail – in the case of werewolves and vampires quite literally – alongside the Shadowhunters to defend the Institute from the onslaught of demons trying to overwhelm them.

Alec couldn’t keep his eye on everyone he cared about _and_ the enemy, so he had to trust that all of them could hold their own while he perforated the demons with salvo after salvo of his arrows.

He was so focused on the skittering Shax demons that he completely missed the Ravener until it was almost too late.

Alec crashed to the ground. A heavy weight landed on top of him. He felt cold slime drop onto his head and twisted around to the sight of nasty, fanged mandibles stretching wide in front of his face.

An iridescent black flash passed between Alec and the drooling fangs. The next second, the Ravener was grasping fruitlessly at a murderous tentacle around its throat. The appendage hauled the demon into the air and broke its neck with a sickening crunch.

“Thanks!”

Alec rolled over his shoulder back onto his feet and kept firing off arrows.

It felt like the battle was dragging on forever. Alec crossed Izzy’s path twice as she kept taking out demons, switching her weapon from a whip to a staff.

Simon was holding his own, getting himself drenched in demon ichor and ruining his clothes as he tore into the enemy.

Jace fought with the grace of years of experience and had the audacity to look devilishly hot while doing it. Alec shook off the inappropriate thought with a pinch of residual guilt and shame and instinctively looked for Magnus.

Holy shit, his husband was breathtaking.

Bright blue magic burst from Magnus’s hands as he moved in fluent, graceful motions, blasting the demons that attacked him. His tentacles writhed around him like a Lovecraftian nightmare, striking or strangling anything that was dumb enough to get too close. His eyes glowed bright yellow, the demon mark exposed, while Magnus focused his magic entirely on the battle.

He was a magnificent beast.

Alec was having all kinds of inappropriate thoughts that could get him killed. He took a deep breath to steady himself, but it got stuck in his throat.

A whole flock of flying lesser demons swirled in the air, coalesced into a dense mass of wings and talons, and dove toward Magnus. They wrapped around him like a black cloud, swallowing him whole, tentacles and all.

“No!”

Alec’s throat vibrated as his heart stopped. He grasped for his arrows, but his quiver was empty. He charged.

“Alec!”

Jace’s voice barely reached his ears.

Alec threw away his bow and pulled his blade from the sheath behind his back.

A blinding blast of white-blue magic erupted from inside the cloud and swept across the battlefield.

Alec was catapulted into the air.

All around him, demons exploded into showers of golden sparks. Downworlders and Shadowhunters alike where pushed back and thrown onto the blood- and ichor-soaked grass.

The next time Alec opened his eyes, he was suspended ten feet above the ground.

Glowing white-blue tentacles were wrapped firmly around Alec’s chest and waist, holding him there.

Magnus was on his knees, propped up by nothing but the tentacles at his back. 

The tentacles gently lowered Alec back to the ground next to his husband. Their brightness faded until they had returned to their natural iridescent black.

“So,” Magnus panted as he rolled his yellow eyes in Alec’s direction. “Madzie’s magic? A lot stronger than we thought.”

“Thank the Angel,” was all Alec had to say to that before he pulled Magnus into a hug.

Once they had cleaned up the mess on the front lawn of the Institute, it wasn’t surprising that their family demanded an explanation for the tentacles.

Magnus and Alec tried their best to remain patient as Izzy prodded at them while Jace kept making Little Mermaid jokes and Simon sang random verses of Under the Sea. But when his sister asked whether Magnus was capable of oviposition and suggested they could use medical sounds to probe the depth of the suction-cups, they were done.

“Get those things away from me,” was the last thing Magnus said to Izzy before they portaled out of the Institute and back to their penthouse in Alicante.

Magnus collapsed in the middle of their bed; his tentacles spread out every which way.

“I just want to sleep for a week,” he said in a tone of utter exhaustion.

Alec looked down at him with a tired smile. “You gonna make some room for me?”

The tentacles shifted to create a wedge of space on Alec’s side of the bed.

“So gracious of you guys,” Alec grumbled as he sank down onto the cool sheets.

The tentacles returned to slither on top of him. Alec covered his face with his hands and groaned out a tired laugh.

“Sorry,” Magnus apologized sincerely. “It’s really hard to control them.”

Alec rolled his eyes until they closed. “Is okay,” he mumbled, already half asleep.

When he woke up again, it was the middle of the night. Magnus was spooned tightly to his back. The tentacles were wrapped around both of them.

Alec realized with a burning hot blush that he wasn’t one hundred percent sure whether the hard length pressed against the crack of his ass was his husband’s penis or one of the tentacles. He should have died of spontaneous combustion when he admitted to himself that he wasn’t planning to move either way. He still didn’t move when a silky appendage slipped around his front and snaked between his legs. That one was definitely a tentacle.

Of all the first times he had given to Magnus, this was without a doubt the strangest. Alec wasn’t even sure if Magnus was awake. He turned his face and bit into his pillow, trying to stifle the helpless laughter, and then trying to stifle a moan, when the naughty tentacle between his legs started to move.

Magnus couldn’t even look at him the next morning over breakfast. When Alec left for work, they still hadn’t talked about it.

Alec barely got any work done and uncharacteristically lost his temper with the Council during a meeting about the incident in New York.

“If it wasn’t for my husband’s tentacles, we would have lost the entire New York Institute and instead of bickering about repair costs we would be arranging the funeral rites for several hundred Shadowhunters!”

He was still low-key fuming by the time he got home.

“Magnus?” he called out across the seemingly empty penthouse.

His husband didn’t respond. Alec called out for him again, louder, maybe a little bit testy. When he still got no response, he hollered loud enough to make the stray dogs outside their window bark in fright.

That was before he noticed the note on the fridge.

_Gone to Catarina’s. Will find a way to get rid of these monsters._

The word ‘monsters’ was underlined several times.

Alec blinked. He had known Magnus was researching a way to remove the tentacles, but he hadn’t thought his husband saw them as monsters.

Magnus didn’t come home all night.

Alec didn’t sleep well. He did something he hadn’t done since the last time he had lapsed into a coma. He called in sick and stayed home.

It was almost three in the afternoon when Magnus finally walked through the door.

The sight of him made Alec drop the paperwork in his hand and rush to his side.

“What the hell did you do?”

Magnus stopped him with a hand on his chest before he could get close.

“Until I can get rid of them,” he said coldly, “this is how I control them.”

Alec snapped his mouth shut and frowned at his husband.

Magnus had pierced holes through every single tentacle, pulled heavy silver rings through the holes, and tied the appendages together at his back with thick leather cords.

Alec couldn’t believe Catarina would have let him do this.

“Magnus, why? This has to hurt.”

Magnus set his jaw in a stubborn line. “Only if they try to go where they’re not supposed to be.”

Alec scoffed. “This is ridiculous.” He shook his head. “No. Take the rings out. Set them free.”

“Over my dead body!” Magnus exploded. “I am not letting those damn monsters molest you again!”

Alec’s mouth dropped open. His face turned beet red. He knew it because he could feel the heat burn up from his throat all the way to his hairline.

“That’s not what happened,” he managed to get out.

Magnus recoiled. “What?”

“They didn’t…” Alec stuttered. “It wasn’t …” God, this was embarrassing. “I wanted it.”

“You cheated on me with my tentacles?” Magnus barked in outrage.

“Your tentacles _are _you!” Alec bellowed in frustration. “How the hell can I cheat on you with you?”

“I was asleep!”

“Magnus, I’m so sorry.”

“I woke up just in time to hear the damn things finish you off. You were whimpering.”

Okay, definitely not a path he wanted this conversation to go down.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, forcefully. “I promise it won’t happen again.”

Alec risked another glance at the tentacles. They looked listless and dull inside their bindings.

“Come on, Magnus. This can’t be healthy for you. Please release them.”

Magnus gritted his teeth and glowered at Alec for another long moment before he finally relented.

The piercings and cords vanished with a wave of his hand.

The tentacles retaliated immediately. They snared around Magnus’s arms and tied them behind his back. White-blue magic slithered through the iridescent black tendrils, keeping Magnus from using his own magic against them.

“Shit!” Alec tried to pry off the tentacles, but they wouldn’t budge. “I think they’re mad at you.”

“Really?” Magnus snapped sarcastically. “What gave it away? God, I hate these things! No, hate is not a strong enough word. I utterly loathe them. If I could, I would take a damn cleaver to them and serve them up at my favorite restaurant!”

“That’s not going to make them want to let go, love,” Alec said mildly.

“I don’t care! I want them dead and gone! Now!”

He hadn’t seen such a spectacular meltdown from Magnus since … Well, he’d never seen such a spectacular meltdown, not even when Magnus had lost his magic.

“Okay, that’s it.” Alec cradled Magnus’s face in his hands and looked him straight in the eyes. “We’ll get rid of them. I promise. If I have to put every Shadowhunter and Warlock in this dimension on research duty, I’ll do it.”

He kissed Magnus to seal the promise and rested their foreheads together.

“Please do,” grumbled Magnus miserably.

Alec started with Catarina, Lorenzo and Andrew, Izzy, Simon, and Raphael, Jace and Clary, Aline and Helen, and last but not least his Mom and Luke.

They buried their noses in every book, scroll, and obscure webpage they could find. It took them a little over 48 hours, four large boxes of donuts, innumerable pots of coffee and more than a few failed attempts, but they finally found the solution.

Of course, it wasn’t easy or safe.

“Cheer up,” Catarina said as she helped Magnus prepare the ingredients for the ritual. “It could be worse. It could be one of those ridiculous Star Trek situations where it’s Fuck-or-Die and you have to have sex with the tentacles.”

Magnus glared at Alec. Alec ducked his head to hide a blush. Everyone stood around in awkward silence as realization sank in.

Catarina cleared her throat and clapped her hands together. “All right, so let’s recap the steps, yes?”

Magnus took the jar of powder from her.

“I portal past Earth’s atmosphere, recite the spell, blow the powder with the last little bit of oxygen in my lungs, and explode inside the vacuum of space. What could go wrong?”

“You won’t explode,” Catarina insisted. “You will release the energy of Madzie’s magic, and then hopefully I’ll be able to pull you back through the portal with my tether.”

“Magnus…”

Alec knew how much Magnus wanted the tentacles gone, but the risk was so great. If the choice was between having another 70 years with Magnus and tentacles or losing his husband in space today, Alec knew one hundred percent what he would choose.

“Alexander, no. I’m doing this.”

Magnus kissed him as if it was the last time.

Alec left the room before he said or did something they would both regret.

He sat in their bedroom and stared at their favorite wedding picture until his eyes blurred.

A sonic boom drowned out every other sound on the planet as a burst of white-blue magic flooded the world and poured in through the bedroom windows, blinding Alec and drenching everything in searing bright light.

Alec sat frozen on their bed long after the light had disappeared, hearing nothing but the ringing in his ears. That was why he didn’t hear the door open.

“Alec.”

Magnus was back.

He was ashen, shaking, mostly naked, and completely free of tentacles.

Alec wished he could say he ran into his husband’s arms.

As it was, Alec collapsed in a puddle of relief and exhaustion, crying because he had thought for sure his husband had exploded in space.

Magnus crawled onto the bed next to him and pulled him into a hug. Two arms only, but they were strong and alive and they held on tight.

Alec hugged him back and hoped they never had to go through anything like this again.

For all the fun the tentacles had brought them, it just wasn’t worth it.

Fin

**Author's Note:**

> Tentacletober prompts appearing in no particular order in this story:
> 
> 1\. Tentacle Cuddles  
2\. Under the Sea  
3\. Injured Tentacles  
4\. Tentacles Save the Day  
5\. First Time  
6\. Tentacle Sounding  
7\. “How many of those are there?”  
8\. Tied up by Tentacles  
9\. Surprise Tentacles  
10\. Tentacle Massage  
11\. Tentacle Porn  
12\. “Get those things away from me.”  
13\. In the Kitchen  
14\. Tentacle Hugs  
15\. Oviposition (What?)  
16\. Tentacles in Peril  
17\. Tentacle Gags (You meant jokes, right? Right.)  
18\. In Space  
19\. Protective Tentacles  
20\. Established Tentacle Relationship  
21\. Tentacle Angst  
22\. Tie Up the Tentacles  
23\. “Don’t stop.”  
24\. Domestic Tentacles.  
25\. In the Bedroom  
26\. Tentacle Piercings  
27\. “They won’t hurt you.”  
28\. Fuck-or-Die Tentacle Sex  
29\. Tentacle Hurt/Comfort  
30\. Accidental Tentacles  
31\. “I can explain.”


End file.
